George Montgomery, youngest of 15 siblings, was born on a homestead near Brady, Montana. Following graduation for Great Falls High School, and one quarter at the University of Montana, he headed for Hollywood. As a legendary Hollywood leading man, actor George Montgomery starred in 87 movies and the "Cimarron City" television series. A notable craftsman, he designed and built homes and made hand-crafted furniture. As a gifted sculptor of over 40 pieces, he created an historic bronze "Custer's Final Moments" © 1975, his second year of sculpting." *

• Information taken from autobiography The Years of George Montgomery © 1981.

Erected by The George Montgomery Foundation for the Arts.

The bank was established June 1, 1880, by T. E. Collins, Charles Duer and L. H. Hershfield and Brother. It was first located in the Benton Record Building, then moved to this location in October 1881. The bank remained here until the large two-story building was built on the corner, and its name was changed to Stockmen’s National Bank. This site had previously housed Wells Fargo and the Benton-Helena Stage Company; in later years the telegraph office was located here.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

"It's a tough town. Walk in the center of the street and keep your mouth shut," Gunslingers walked this street; few earned a reputation but more earned eternity here than in other fabled western towns.

Indians were fair game. Their corpses dumped into the river started war and a massacre. Mose Solomon, saloon owner, eliminated two customers on the corner; Lou Marshall added Hinchley and several others gunned down on this street "won't be missed."

Poker was played with six-guns atop the table. Females from the brothels were as tough as the men. Madame Moustache brandished Colts to halt the landing of a steamboat carrying smallpox. Saloons and "houses" stayed open all night. The block was lined with barrooms, cathouses and gambling dens–so lawless it had to circled by a cavalry troop so a U.S. Marshal could serve warrants of five on its residents.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

This is a replica of the buffalo robe press that was used at Old Fort Benton. It was big and awkward, but robes were so bulky and heavy that it took equipment like this to handle them. Robes were pressed hair-side out after the four sides were folding into a three-foot square. 10 to 12 hides made a bundle that weighed nearly 150 pounds, about what two men could carry.

The long tree pole of cotton-wood is anchored into the ground at one end. It is lifted up at the other end with the gin pole which opens up the bed of the press. The folded robes are placed on the lower bed of the press. With the men also adding their weight, the furs are tightly pressed together and tied before they are removed and carried to the boat for shipment down river.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

I.G. Baker and T. C. Power built the original Thwing House in 1868. Under the watchful eye of Mrs. Thwing, this “downtown” hotel competed with the Overland. The hotel closed in 1870 and was rented as military officers’ quarters. It reopened as the Choteau House in 1879, owned and operated by dapper Irishman Jere Sullivan. His glib tongue promoted both his hostelry and Fort Benton. Sullivan gradually rebuilt the structure in brick and added the third story during the homestead days.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

When Lewis and Clark found this land of mountains, river valley and plains, it was so full of buffalo and other grazing animals that it seemed like Paradise. In the1880's the area became vast open cattle ranges, and today Montana's greatest wheat producer. On e of the nine original counties in Montana Territory, Chouteau County extended from the east slopes of the Rockies halfway to North Dakota in 1864. When county gerrymandering occurred in the early 1900's, all or part of twelve counties came from within its original borders. Be sure to visit other important historic sites in Chouteau County.

Chouteau County was one of the nine original counties created February 2. 1865. At that time there was a sporting disregard for assessors, taxes and the law. For example, in 1872 when the jail burned, all the peace officers were in Canada trading whiskey to the Indians.

Taxes were first assessed in 1873 to the tune of $1172.55 for the county. The original courthouse, a block over on Main Street burned on January 5, 1883. The new construction was originally priced at $12,000 but, like government today, the ante was soon raided to $50,000.

Gus Senieur got the bid at $43,000 and the architects Kees and Fisk from Minneapolis designed the structure. The last brick was laid July 4, 1884 but it was not until September that everyone moved in. Some additions have been made to the rear but its integrity remains intact. It is the second oldest courthouse in Montana still in use.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

The Roman Catholic faith came to Fort Benton even before the walls of the fort were erected. Father Jean Pierre de Smet and Nicholas Point celebrated the first mass on Sept. 27, 1846. "Black Robes" continued to serve the area irregularly until Fr. Camillus Imoda arrived in 1878, and directed completion of the first frame church of the Immaculate Conception on this site. On Dec. 31, 1905 fire destroyed the structure. The present stone church was constructed in 1907 and served the parish for sixty years.

In the tower is Michael, the brass bell which was installed in 1880. Given to the church by the Flanagans, it served Fort Benton faithfully for over one hundred years - not only calling the faithful to services but also tolling for fires, celebrations and disasters. In 1908 it rang all night, leading people to safety from the dark floodwaters of the Missouri that were flowing through the streets of its city.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

The Coulson Steamboat Headquarters once stood here. The Coulson Line was the largest early company on the upper river. It ran some of the most immense boats, like the Montana and the Dakota, that were over 250 feet long. Coulson dominated the river traffic in the 1860s-1870s.

Colonel George Clendenin came to Fort Benton as an agent for Coulson in 1877 and erected the building for offices and a warehouse in 1881. Struck by gold fever, Clendenin left shortly thereafter for Montana's last big strike in the Barker district of the Big Belt Mountains. Clendinin (sic) missed finding his fortune when he died in a cave-in in 1882. A boom town in the Neihart area was named for him that has since disappeared, along with Gold Run, Baker and Hughesville. In later years the Clendenin building served as a dance hall, law offices, lodge hall, brothels, and apartments before it was torn down.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

On September 21, 1877, Fort Benton commander Major Guido Ilges got word that the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) had traveled across the Judith Basin headed for Canada. Thirteen members of Company F, Seventh Infantry Regiment and to civilians volunteers loaded a mountain howitzer onto a steamboat and set off down the Missouri River. Thirty-eight volunteers and one soldier road along on horseback. the intended to protect Fort Claggett and the supplies at the Cow Island steamboat landing.

They were too late. Before they reached Cow Island, Company F could see smoke and flames in the distance. Near Cow Creek, some Nimíipuu had confronted a supply wagon, taken supplies they needed, and set fire to the rest. Outnumbered, the soldiers turned back to Fort Benton.

1877 was a long and sad summer:

In June, after the US Government ordered them to leave their homes in northeastern Oregon and western Idaho and move to the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, nearly 800 Nimíipuu men, women and children left their homelands in search of freedom. The U.S. Military pursued them 1,179 miles across Idaho, through Yellowstone and into Montana where the Nimíipuu were surrounded by Colonel Nelson A. Miles' troops at the Bear Paw, only forty miles from sanctuary in Canada. After enduring five days of bitter cold and no food, Chief Joseph determined the people could last no longer. On October 5, as Chief White Bird fled across the border with the able bodied, Joseph walked across the snowy plain, handed over his rifle and spoke his famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

Although some Nimíipuu escaped to Canada, Joseph and those who stayed behind were exiled to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). After eight years, those who survived the brutal conditions in exile were allowed to return to reservations in the Northwest in 1885.

Solomon's Medicine Lodge Saloon was remodeled in 1875 and became the Centennial Hotel. This frame building was moved to the back of the lot by Robert S. and Lydian Smith Culbertson for living quarters, while a new two-story brick hotel was built in 1882 which they named the Pacific Hotel. In 1890 the name was changed to the Culbertson House. The hotel had ten rooms upstairs, a saloon and a spacious lobby and dining room.

In 1867 Robert came to work for the I.G. Baker Co. in Fort Benton. He was the nephew of Alexander Culbertson, the founder of Fort Benton. The Culbertson House remained in family hands until 1945. After many years and many owners, it has been returned to its original beauty of the 1880's.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Originally this site was occupied by a wooden frame building that housed Mose Solomon’s Medicine Lodge. This legendary saloon was open twenty-four hours a day from spring thaw to first snow. When the building burned, prominent lawyer, customs collector, insurance agent, and stockman Thomas Cummings replaced it with this two-story brick structure. Cummings sold out and the building then housed a Chinese restaurant and emporium with an opium den in the basement until the turn of the twentieth century.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Fort Benton’s building boom of 1887-1884 saw the construction of many commercial buildings made of locally produced soft brick. This fine example was built in 1881 as a saddlery by Davidson and Moffitt of Helena. The River Press Company, publisher of the town’s newspaper, purchased the building in 1883. The local news has been printed on these premises ever since. Decorative corbelling and four arches over the front windows and doorway embellished the original one-story structure.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

Thomas Francis Meagher was born in Ireland in 1823. An Irish Revolutionary, he was caught and sentenced to death. Meagher's sentence was commuted to exile in Tasmania but he escaped to the United States. As a Brigadier General, Meagher commanded the Fighting 69th during the Civil War and was the hero of the Union Army at the Battle of Antietam. He came West after the war as the secretary to the Governor, and became Acting Governor when the appointee refused to stay in Montana. Meagher had just been relieved of his position as Governor when he came to Fort Benton for one final duty - to pick up arms and ammunition for the Montana Militia. What occurred the evening of July 1, 1867 is still speculation. Did he fall overboard, was he pushed, or was he weighed down and thrown? His body was never found. Your guess is as good as anyone's!

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

"Fire" was a cry dreaded by any Westerner, and early Fort Benton was no exception. Flimsy wooden buildings, haystacks, kerosene lamps and primitive stoves created major fire hazards. When city government was organized in 1883, the first steps in fire protection included this structure, built on contract by John Wilton for $1710. Later it doubled as the City Hall until 1966.

Chouteau Engine Company No. 1 organized, held practices, firemen's balls, and waited for the pumper that had been brought to Cow Island by steamboat. When freighters got around to bringing it to Fort Benton, the paint was peeling and a wheel was missing. Nevertheless, it was Fort Benton's pride.

The firemen repaired it, sat it on Mike Lynch's ferry boat, and tried to pump a stream of water over the rooster weathervane on the old Record Building a block away. It served faithfully, going second-hand to Lewiston and eventually returning to Fort Benton for restoration in 1988.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Founded in 1846 as a fur post, Fort Benton is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Montana. From its palisaded walls grew the most important transportation center in the Northwest. Trails led to all points of the compass, carrying goods and supplies to the U.S. and Canada. Steamboats docked at Fort Benton's levee. Freight was loaded into giant wagons pulled by hundreds of mules and oxen to faraway places in Idaho, Washington, and Alberta. When the railroads crossed Montana and Alberta in the early 1880's, the town ended as a transportation center but the area continued to prosper with cattle, sheep and wheat.

The Fort Benton to Fort MacLeod or "Whoop-up" Trail into Canada was the main artery of commerce in the 1869-1883 era. Twenty yoke of oxen was a team and each team hauled three of the heavy freight wagons loaded with trade goods, calico and whiskey. They returned loaded with hides for the St. Louis market. Until the closing of the river trade this road was the source of supply for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the boundary survey and the Canadian Pacific Railway. The resourceful, fearless plainsmen and bullwhackers relaxed at the end of their hazardous journey, opened up their cargo, not the calico, and "whooped it up." Thus the name "Fort Whoop-up" and the famous "Whoop-up Trail."

This three-inch ordinance rifle came to Fort Benton sometime after the Civil War, probably during the time it was a military port, 1869-1881. It has remained here since its arrival, and was here during the Indian Wars of 1876-1877. It has seen no action since the Civil War. Fort Benton's mountain howitzer, inside the museum, did see action during the Nez Perce War in 1877.

Designed by the U.S. Ordinance Department in 1861, it has smooth barrel lines, a new concept, rolled wrought iron instead of bronze was used in the barrel to reduce cost and production time. Its carriage is a standard six-pounder field gun type, and could rapidly be changed in case of broken parts.

The three-inch ordinance rifle gained fame in the Confederate Army for its accuracy. "Union gunners could hit the end of a flour barrel at a half mile more often than they missed." During the siege at Richmond, "Yankee gunners with the 3" rifle put shells through the ports of our ramparts at a mile with forbidding regularity.

The muzzle stampings show that this cannon was produced along with 1000 other barrels, at the Phoenix Iron Works in Phoenixville, PA. This particular barrel is no. 799 and was produced in 1864. Its sister cannon is at Gettysburg National Battlefield.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Fort Benton was the eastern terminus of the Mullan Military Road. Construction of the road began in the summer of 1859 at Fort Walla Walla, the head of navigation on the Columbia River. Lieutenant John Mullan of the U.S. Topographical Engineers commanded a work detail of 140 civilians and soldiers that hacked, blasted, and carved a road eastward toward Fort Benton through northern Idaho and western Montana. The U.S. Army intended the road to carry troops and supplies from the upper reaches of the Missouri River across the Continental Divide to the Pacific Northwest. Mullan needed to complete the road to Fort Benton by August 1, 1860 in order to meet troops there and then escort them back across the newly completed road.

On July 2, 1860, the steamboat Chippewa, and Key West deposited 300 soldiers under the command of Major George Blake at the Fort Benton levee. Among the troops was Lieutenant August Kautz, a Military Academy classmate of Mullan. The soldiers anxiously awaited the arrival of Mullan, who was ordered to lead them back across the newly completed road to Walla Walla. After nearly a month, Mullan and his men arrived at Fort Benton, the road completed on time and a little over budget. Mullan left Fort Benton a few days ahead of Blake's recruits, improving the road in advance of the soldiers. After marching over two months and covering more than 600 miles, the soldiers reached Walla Walla. It was the only time the Mullan Road was used as a military road.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

When railroads replaced steamboats, Fort Benton's importance as a trade center declined. In response, Fort Benton businessmen formed the Benton Bridge Company to construct a bridge across the Missouri River to capture the trade of the rapidly developing Judith Basin. The first steel bridge across the Missouri River in Montana made it possible for ranchers and farmers to ship their livestock and grain from the Fort Benton railhead. It thus preserved Fort Benton's significance to regional trade. Since the Missouri was classified as a navigable waterway, the newly formed Benton Bridge Company needed federal permission to build. Congress approved the project after requiring that one span be built on a pivot so the bridge could open to let boats through. In 1888, the firm of Haney and Ryann began sinking the bridge's piers, which they protected with ice breaks built of heavy timbers. The work was dangerous; two men died during construction. The Milwaukee Bridge and Iron Works Company built the steel and iron superstructure. On completion, the newspaper declared the 825-foot, six span, pin-connected, through-truss bridge "as strong and durable as its is handsome." It cost pedestrians 5 cents and a horse and buggy 25 cents to cross. Each head of cattle cost 12.5 cents, with special rates of large droves. The county purchased the structure in 1892. After June 1908 floods washed out the swing span, the Army Corps of Engineers gave permission to replace it with a permanent pin-connected, steel Parker through-truss span. Vehicles continued to cross the Missouri over "the Great Iron Bridge" until 1962.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

The Fort Benton Engine House, built in 1883, and the Grand Union Hotel are two of only a few structures remaining to remind us of the rapid expansion here during the flourishing steamboat days. When Fort Benton incorporated in 1883, a volunteer fire department was organized and a contract let for $1,710 to build this engine house. By fall, the building was complete and thirty-five men organized into three companies of firemen were ready to drill—but the firefighting equipment wintered at Cow Island because the steamboat bringing it up the Missouri met low water at season’s end (not an uncommon situation). The gear was brought on to Fort Benton by ox wagon the following spring. This building served as City Hall for more than seventy-five years, until 1966, and from 1899 it housed the city jail. Its use today as a public meeting hall for service organizations recalls the past use as a center for social activities as well as for waiting firefighters.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

Founded in 1846 as the fur trade transitioned fro furs to buffalo robes, Fort Benton was both a trading post and a center for distribution of Indian annuities. In the early 1860s, Montana's gold rush and the initiation of steamboat traffic made the town a freighting and transportation hub, the toughest town in the Northwest, and a military post. Hopeful miners and adventurers came up the Missouri River through the wonders of the White Cliffs area and disembarked on Fort Benton's levee. Busted or flush, they returned in the fall headed for "the states." as did most who served or preyed upon them. Millions of dollars of gold accompanied the lucky few aboard the steamboats and mackinaws. When the placers played out, Fort Benton merchants found new markets north along the Whoop-up Trail. The first trade goods included whiskey to the Indians; later more respectable merchandise reached settlers and the Northwest Mount3d Police. Entrepreneurs I.G. Baker, T.C. Power, W.S, Wetzel, and Charles William Conrad developed the territory's largest banking and mercantile operations. Wagons rolled in all directions from Fort Benton, the self-proclaimed "Chicago of the Plains." The world's innermost port flourished until railroads reached the region. In 1887, the steamboat trade's glory days ended. The economy shifted toward the sheep and cattle industry, with area ranchers shipping large herds to markets in Chicago. I the early 1900s, thousands of homesteaders flocked to the region, and Fort Benton prospered as the center of trade for the fertile "Golden Triangle."

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

On June 14, 1869 nine sternwheelers moored along this bank, unloading whiskey, gold pans, salt, bacon, boot and miners. Ox teams hauled the freight to faraway points. Wells Fargo coaches took miners to Helena for $25, fights with the Blackfoot were free.

Six hundred mountain boats (since they came nearly to the Rockies) docked at Fort Benton from 1860 to 1890. Steamboats supplied the U.S. cavalry, the Indians they hunted, Canadian Mounties, and whiskey-runners. Benton merchants were plumb impartial about business. They purveyed their goods from posts at Fort Whoop-up, Qu'Appelle, Last Chance Gulch and other places with just ordinary names.

One spring before the first boat, tobacco sweepings were sold to eager residents at a buck a pipeful. On a fall day in '66 armed miners loaded a wagon full of gold dust onto the Luella that was bound for St. Louis.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Joseph LaBarge docked the Emilie on June 17, 1862, three days ahead of the American Fur Company boats. His Emilie was the first side-wheeler at Fort Benton. LaBarge unloaded six hundred tons of freight with is partner James Harkness. Harkness wrote, "laid out Fort LaBarge, 300 ft. by 200 ft. Madame LaBarge drove the first stake and my daughter Margaret the second." The forts buildings were in a "U" shape, the open end facing the river.

They planned to trade along the river and in the new mining towns. Harkness intended to remain for two years, but almost beat the Emilie back to St. Louis. He decided the Blackfoot were too much and left, abandoning the freight to Andrew Dawson from the rival American Fur Co.

In the aftermath, Montana had its first law suit. Joseph LaBarge lost $100,000; their oxen and wagons started the Diamond R, Montana's largest freighting outfit. In 1864 the American Fur Co. bought what was left of the business, including the sawmill, at deeply discounted rates.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

As you look across the Missouri, on the third bottom were two fur posts within several hundred yards of one another. Fort Cotton, built in 8142 by the Union Fur Company, existed only two years before it was abandoned. Fort Lewis was built by Alexander Culbertson for the American Fur Company in 1845. Its tenure was also only two years before it was dismantled and moved down river where it became Fort Benton. Both posts were built for robe trade with the Piegan of the Blackfoot nation. Fort Lewis was named for Capt. Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, in this area from 1804 to 1806. Fur traders soon followed, opening the Northern Plains to trade and settlement.

Opened to the public Nov. 1, 1882 the Grand Union Hotel was Fort Benton's pride, a haven of relaxation in a boisterous frontier town at the head of navigation on the Missouri. Total cost of the finest hostelry between Seattle and the Twin Cities was $200,000. The name echoes the reconciliation following the great Civil War in which many guests participated, wearing blue or gray.

Steamboats blew for their landings and great cattle herds crossed the Missouri within sight and sound of its patrons. Army officers, Canadian Mounties, miners, trappers, freighters, river captains, stockmen, missionaries, Indian agents and road agents rubbed shoulders in the Grand Union's lobby, supped in its spacious dining room and adjourned to its well-stocked bar for the relaxation due a frontiersman at a weary journey'd end.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

In the 25 years following the first gold discoveries in western Montana, before railroads arrived in Fort Benton 1887, steamboats made hundreds of trips bringing fortune-seekers and their supplies from St. Louis to Fort Benton. Some of the boats eventually sank or were destroyed in the turbulent, hazard-filled waters. One world traveler of the era said the trip against the current of the Missouri was more frightening than sailing the high seas during a wild storm.

A frequent-and exhausting-challenge the boatmen faced was running aground on the sandbars that are surprisingly common in this river. At those times, long wooden poles (spars) were driven into the river-bottom to lift the boat. While noisy engine revved backwards, boatmen used ropes and pulleys to pry the wooden spars and wrestle the boat free. Called "grasshoppers" because their use made the boats resemble giant insects, the spars often had to be used repeatedly, each time lifting and moving the boat mere feet or yards further on its way, literally walking the boat down the river.

You can look from here to the patio of the Interpretive Center to get a picture of the scene. The patio is shaped to mirror that of a steamboat deck, with a wooden "grasshopper" coming off the side. A capstan (rotating machine) on the deck, driven by a noisy engine that was in constant use at such times, moved ropes that raised the bow of the boat to free it from the sandbar.

"...we found the boat hard-fast on the Shonkin Bar. The boat backed and shoved forward in efforts to free itself but only came more firmly wedged on the bar. The spars were lowered into the river bed, the engine started and the wheel reversed in an attempt to pry the boat off the bar. First one spar broke, then the second one... The crew was ordered overboard with picks, shovels and crow bars. After thirty hours of ceaseless toil, the hard bar under the boat parted into clods of sand and gravel and we floated clear." May Flanagan, 1887 from "Packets to Paradise" Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., Missoula, by John G. Lepley.

Erected by Missouri Breaks Interpretive Center.

Across the levee on the corner stood the two-story house built by the sheep man Paris Gibson who was the founder of Great Falls. He later became a promoter for James J. Hill's railroad. In 1887 while negotiating the entry of the railroad into Fort Benton, he ran afoul of the Conrad and Power brothers. Those Fort Benton merchants continually raised the price of land needed by the rail line to build along the river.

Exasperated, Gibson decided to build on top of the hill and stated that he would "see the grass grow in the streets of Fort Benton," and he almost did, However, the confrontation save the levee from ties, tracks, and trains and left Front Street with an unobstructed view of the river.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

Stores, warehouses and homes belonging to Montana's greatest trading company were along this side street. Founded in 1866, I.G. Baker Co.'s freight wagons cut deep trails into western history. From northern Canada along routes in all directions, the I.G. Baker Co. was the giant among mercantile businesses.

Run by the Conrad brothers, the company went into banking, transportation and distilleries. Indians trapped for them on the Great Slave Lake, miners and Indians guzzled their booze, and all bought staples from their stories. They were paymasters for the Mounties, ran their own steamboat line, and peddled their goods for buffalo robes, wolf skins and gold dust.

The I.G. Baker firm carried so much weight in the North that when the Hudson Bay Co. bought Baker's Canadian stores in 1891, a Bay Co. director drank a gleeful toast to the end of a firm that "cut our dividends from pounds to shillings."

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

From the 1850s to 1887, Fort Benton was the trade center for this region of the American and Canadian West. Like others who chose to stay when the fur trade declined, I.G. Baker (last American Fur Company factor at the fort) turned to new endeavors. Through the 1870s and 1880s, I.G. Baker Company was Montana's largest mercantile enterprise. But when the company began in 1895-1866, Baker and his brother George had only a log store along the levee. Baker's wife joined him in 1867, and he began to construct this home–then a two-room adobe with a sod roof. In it , Montana Territory's Acting Governor Thomas F. Meagher ate his last meal before his mysterious drowning in 1867. Sometime in the next decade, two rooms to the rear were added and metal replaced the sod roof. In 1876, a second remodeling added clapboard siding, a shingle roof, and the front portico. The from room on the left became as it appears today. The mercantile Conrad family also called this building home, and it once was used as officers quarters for the fort.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National

Register of Historic Places.

On this day water from the Missouri River rose to this level at this location due to heavy rainfall over Western Montana.

For more information contact

National Weather Service Great Falls, MT www.weather.gov/greatfalls

Missouri Basin River Forecast Center www.weater.gov.mbrfc

USGS Montana Water Science Center mt.water.usgs.gov

____________________________

HIGH WATER MARK 18.50 feet - 140,000 cubic feet per second

Keelboats antedated steamboats and used every kind of power–chiefly man–except steam. Propelling them was no idle pastime. The usual method was to set long ash poles on the river bottom, toe the cleated walk and push hard, bow to stern. Crew also stumbled along the bank at the end of a cable. Favoring breezes thankfully indicated a sail.

The keelboat speed record, a brisk 110 miles in 61 days, was set in 1811 by a select crew of Manual Lisa, an impatient character. South Dakota winds chased his vessel clear around the Great Bend below Pierre for 75 miles in a long day. In the enclosed cabin keelboats carried beads, whiskey and other goods traded for beaver and buffalo robes at Indian posts along the Missouri,

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

The river below was the first trail west. On their way to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark used the Missouri as their route to the Rocky Mountains. Maria's River enters the Missouri fifteen miles down stream. In June 1805 the Captains spent ten days exploring both forks, trying to decide which way led to the mountains. Although their men wanted to continue up the north fork, Lewis and Clark chose the south fork. Their decision prevented weeks of retracing the trail and probably saved the expedition. The Corps of Discovery was able to cross the Rockies before winter prevented its passage.

On July 16, 1806, Captain Lewis gave instructions to Sgt. Ordway to finish the portage at the Great Falls and wait for him at the month of Maria's River. After their wild encounter with the Blackfoot on the Two Medicine and a twenty-hour ride, Lewis, Drouillard and the two Field brothers were overcome with "unspeakable satisfaction" when they heard gunshots coming from the river.

They rode to the bank and saw Sgt. Ordway's party in six canoes coming down the river. They hurriedly unpacked their horses and gave them their freedom. Quickly loading their gear, they headed to the mouth of Maria's River where they opened the caches and abandoned the damaged red pirogue before hastily leaving Blackfoot county.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Members of Masonic Lodge #25 built this brick structure in 1882, housing their temple on the second floor. Grocer W. H. Burgess rented first floor space. Economic decline in the late 1880s caused the Masons to lose title, and Burgess, too, went broke. The lodge rented space until 1901, while the lower floor accommodated the Sharp Brothers' Store. The sons of the Sharp brothers became two of Fort Benton’s famous admirals. Originally one of a pair, the structure displays elaborate brick corbelling typical of the 1880s commercial architecture.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

Originally built to house the Stockmen’s National Bank, this solid structure represents typical pre-1900s commercial architecture. Its 1890 construction is significant as one of the few buildings erected after Fort Benton’s heyday and before homesteaders flocked to Montana in the twentieth century. Arched windows and front corner quoins add visual interest to this historic institution, which later accommodated the Chouteau County Bank and First Bank System. The ornate, one-story extension at the rear was added in 1918.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

On July 19, 1882 the steamer Rose Bud docked at the Fort Benton levee. That night the residents got their first glimpse of an electric light with a show from the steamer's big searchlight, much to the chagrin of a prominent local citizen and his girlfriend on the balcony of the Choteau House. By 1887 five Block P boats had electricity in their cabins.

The city of Fort Benton had its own steam generator and a water treatment plant in 1888. Both were the first in Montana, several months ahead of Helena and years ahead of Butte. Celebration of the occasion was on St. Patrick's Day at the Choteau House; Mayor Jere Sullivan and builder George F. Woolston gave the featured addresses to a houseful of delighted citizens.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

Within a few steps of this sign the Mullan Road came up Helena Hill from Fort Benton. It wound its way over 600 miles to the head of navigation on the Columbia River at Fort Walla Walla. It was the first federal highway in the Northwest. Covered wagons, stagecoaches and freighters used this route to the gold bonanzas in the mountains of Montana and Idaho. Branches led to Helena, Bannack and Virginia City. The main road continued on west through Missoula and up the Clark's Fork to Spokane, before turning south through the Palouse to the Columbia.

Captain John Mullan started surveying the Mullen Road in 1853 and began construction in 1859 of the 624-mile wagon road that linked Fort Benton to the head of navigation on the Columbia. Indian wars slowed him somewhat, but Mullan opened his route to travel in 1860, years ahead of the transcontinental railroads and at a fraction of the cost of an interstate turnoff.

The Mullan Road began right at the sally port here and ended at Fort Walla Walla. A tourist heading for Spokane retraces hundreds of those miles, but no long contends with Blackfoot Indians. The road's history has faded into forgotten lore, but it was a highway to empire, the fastest land-water route across the continent in its day. Travelers took 47 days on the road, but boarded steamboats at either end where comfort and pleasure promised a safe arrival at either terminus.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Across the street is a log house that was occupied by Major Guido Ilges, commander of the troops at Fort Benton during the Indian Wars of 1876-1877. Ilges took a volunteer force of eighteen men to Cow Island where they confronted the Nez Perce during their flight to reach Canada. Ilges and his men arrived just in time to see a soldier from upriver killed by the Indians. They hurriedly dug rifle pits and were pinned down by fire from the warriors of Chiefs Looking Glass and Joseph. The Indians took supplies that they had requested peaceably, and continued their retreat toward the border.

General Howard and some of his troops returned to Fort Benton after Joseph's surrender, the finale of Indian trouble in this part of Montana. Troops remained in Fort Benton until 1881, long after they were needed for protection of the river port. Chief Joseph's actual surrender rifle can be viewed at the Missouri Breaks Interpretive Center here in Fort Benton.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

In September 1877 the Nez Perce traveled across the Judith Basin headed for Canada. In anticipation of trouble, Major Ilges (commandant at Fort Benton) organized a party of fifty volunteers, mostly Fort Benton's Irish Fenians. They loaded the mountain howitzer onto a mackinaw boat and the rest of the party set out on horseback to protect Fort Claggett and the freight at the Cow Island steamboat landing.

Arriving at Cow Island too late to prevent the Indians from crossing the river, the volunteers pursued Chief Joseph and the bands of Nez Perce up the Cow Island Trail ... and found more Indians than they had bargained for. After one volunteer was killed and another was wounded, they let discretion be the better part of valor and retreated back to the landing to wait for the U.S. Army. The military finally caught up with the Nez Perce at Snake Creek in the Bear's Paw Mts. After a battle lasting several days, Chief Joseph surrendered to General Howard and Colonel Miles.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Logs were floated downstream from Fort Lewis in May of 1847 and erected on foundations built the year before. The fort was called Fort Lewis or Fort Clay before officially named for Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri upon completion of the Bourgeois Quarters in adobe on Christmas Day in 1850. The log buildings replaced by adobe; the trade store was the last to be rebuilt in 1860.

By 1865 the fur trade was over. Chouteau and Company sold its holdings to the Northwestern Trading Company. Buildings deteriorated rapidly at the fort; when the military took over in 1869, the walls and buildings had fallen into such a state of disrepair that the troops were quartered downtown. The army abandoned the fort in 1881 at the end of the Indian Wars.

By the turn-of-the-century, only two walls and one blockhouse remained. Thanks to a major restoration effort by the Daughters of the American Revolution, the blockhouse was saved and today is the oldest standing building in Montana.

In its heyday Fort Benton was the premier Blackfoot buffalo robe trading post on the Upper Missouri and is the only original post still in Montana.

Erected by

Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

The bridge at this site was completed in 1888 and remained in use until 1963. The Benton Bridge Company constructed it as a toll bridge–no federal subsidy, county or state money was involved–to encourage the city's Judith Basin trade. Choteau County eventually paid a token $9999 for the structure in 1896. For many years, a great 225-foot turn span stood ready to swing open for the steamboats that never came; finally in 1908 the O.K. steamed through. Neither survived long afterwards. The big span went down in a flood on June 6, 1908 and the O.K. burned on June 30 of that year.

When the span was rebuilt, the Corps of Engineers gave special permission for Fort Benton's bridge to block steamboat navigation further up the Big Muddy. Oddly enough the cost of its replacement upriver was financed by a special county levy that matched federal funds; again no state money was involved.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

On this site stood old Fort Campbell; it was the "opposition fort" to Fort Benton downriver. Fort Campbell was moved here by Alexander Harvey in 1847 and built of adobe.

Harvey was a fearless frontiersman, a character whom no one heedlessly crossed. It was he who turned a cannon on a Blackfoot trading party at For MacKenzie. Harvey never took a backward step before any man, but on his deathbed he wrote, "I die in peace and friendship with the world."

Men of the two forts bickered while Indians dickered for bargains. Like its competitor, Fort Campbell saw stirrings times during the robe trade, but business dwindled and the American Fur Company bought it in 1960. The crowning indignity was Andrew Dawson's loan of the old fort's buildings to Jesuit missionaries for use as a monastery - a sad come-down for a Blackfoot fur post.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

In the late 1870's after the gold rush, stockmen began to move cattle from the mountains to the northern plains of Montana and utilize the free grass on the open ranges. Montana's short grass prairies had the best grass of the entire Great Plains. Soon large cattle drives from Texas flooded the Montana range until the hard winter of 1886-1887 caused tremendous losses, and the beginning of the end to the open range cattle business

Local cattlemen banded together in associations to protect their herds from wolves, rustlers and Texas cattle. There were two associations headquartered in Fort Benton. Members of the Shonkin Stock Association ranged south of the Missouri to the foothills of the Highwoods and east to Arrow Creek. The second association was the Teton-Marias Association that was north of the river to the Canadian boarder and west to the Rocky mountains.

The associations hired cowboys to ride the range for roundup, branding and moving the herds to market in the fall. Cowboys were free-spirited wanderers who worked by the season and owned only the guns they carried and saddle they rode.

Erected by

Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

In 1864, Mills and Douglas operated a restaurant and hotel on this corner. Mills and Robert S. Culbertson went into partnership in 1877, opening a new establishment called the Centennial Hotel in celebration of the United States' 100th birthday. Culbertson, nephew of Alexander Culbertson who was the founder of Fort Benton, became full owner in 1881. In 1882, the hotel was rebuilt of brick and renamed the Pacific Hotel; later it was also known as the Culbertson House. Robert and his wife Lydia operated the hotel until her death in 1912. It was operated by one of their nine children, Esther Casey, until 1941, then sold by the family in 1946.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

Civilizations have always established themselves around water sources, and the founding of Fort Benton continued the pattern. As the population grew and the community developed, a water treatment plant became necessary.

Montana's first water treatment plant was constructed in 1888 where the Interpretive Center stands today. Fort Benton's water treatment plant used an ancient technology developed by the Egyptians as early as 1500 B.C., which used alum (or potash). River water was pumped into a series of settling ponds, where alum was added, causing sediments to fall to the bottom. The clear surface water was then pumped through wooden pipes to people's homes.

By the time of the Great Depression, Fort Benton's entire water system-the state's oldest-was decaying and in need of repairs. In 1933, Congress created the Public Works Administration, and budgeted $6 billion for projects that would improve public welfare while also "priming the pump" for the nation's economy, by creating jobs and reviving industry. Modernizing Fort Benton's drinking water plant was one of the projects.

The small circular brick building in front of you was built then, and served as the pump-house that pulled water from the river to the treatment system, which used chlorine to disinfect the water. In 1987, a newer water treatment plant was constructed down river from here, but the round pump-house was left intact.

Fort Benton has remained in the forefront of water treatment solutions. Its current facility was the first municipal water treatment plant in the U.S. to use ultraviolet light as its primary means of making the river water clean and healthy to drink.

"Tuesday afternoon a River Press reporter in quest of information strolled through the upper end of town, and doubtless obeying the law of gravitation soon found his steps directed toward the city water works plant. It is a neat comely brick building that attracts the attention of the visitor, and its thirty-inch smokestack that towers seventy feet in the air is suggestive of a manufacturing industry. Such, in fact, it is, for not only does it handle water in wholesale quantities, but manufactures light. Strange, isn't it, what man's ingenuity and inventive genius has accomplished in the modern days in which we are living." Fort Benton River Press, February 22, 1888

Erected by Missouri Breaks Interpretive Center.

In August 1936 a casket containing a sheepherder's body was loaded on a baggage car headed East for burial. A dog, of collie strain, watched with anxious eyes. He was to be there to meet every train year after year.

Conductor Ed Shields by 1939 pieced the dog's story together, linking Shep with the body shipped that August day. With the real story known, Shep became famous. Many, many well-intentioned offers to adopt him were gently declined; friends knew Shep's sole aim was to keep his vigil. Shep died on January 13, 1942, slipping on the tracks before an incoming train. His passing was mourned by all who knew his story. He was laid to rest atop the bluff above the depo (sic); his funeral was attended by hundreds. Reverend Ralph Underwood took as his theme Senator George Graham Vest's "Eulogy on the Dog," a tribute to a dog's faithfulness to his master which Shep so fully exemplified.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

The Episcopal Church came to Montana Territory with Bishop D.S. Tuttle in 1867, who rode horseback to mining camps and frontier posts. An abandoned saloon housed the first Fort Benton services, then a hotel and school.

When Rev. S.C. Blackiston arrived in 1879, a committee was named by Tuttle to build a new church: W.G. Conrad, J.S. Hill, W.H. Todd, A.B. Kester, F.C, Roosevelt, Charles Conrad, Charles Duer, William Wetzel, Joseph A. Baker and Paris Gibson. $4,000 was subscribed by June 11, 1880. John Wilton was the architect and Henry Brinkman, donated the land. The first services were held August 10, 1881. The church's name came from St. Paul's School in Concord, NH; its visiting headmaster Rev. Colt made the initial contribution.

This is the oldest Episcopal Church in Montana and the oldest church in Fort Benton.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Stages operated from Fort Benton in many directions well into the 20th century. The first routes connected the gold camps of Helena and Virginia City with the river port. In 1866 C.C. Huntley established the route, but was soon bought out by Wells Fargo and later by Gilmer and Salisbury. Light mud wagons and Concord coaches were used; sleds were sometimes driven through the mountains in winter.

The trip to Helena took most of two days with no layovers and cost $20. There were ten stops, some for food and others to change horses. It was an overnight ride between Sun River Leavings and Rock Creek Station and a wild trip, particularly in winter. Stages ran daily until the railroad came in 1887, and for a few more years tri-weekly to Lewistown and the Judith Basin before their rail service arrived.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

Just over the brow of this hill, nestled against the banks of the Missouri, is Fort Benton. It was the head of steamboat navigation on the Missouri, the world's innermost port. Below this point is a shelf in the river that prevented further passage. Along Front Street is a mile-and-a-half levee. From 1860 until the railroad arrived in 1887, most of the freight for the northwesters U.S. and Canada was unloaded on the levee. Come down the hill and walk along the Missouri, where those who came off the decks of steamboats began their lives in Montana.

Part of the remains of Fort Benton's last steam boats.

Baby Rose & City of Fort Benton were both lost on the Missouri after 1900.

Originally built to house the Stockmen’s National Bank, this solid structure represents typical pre-1900s commercial architecture. Its 1890 construction is significant as one of the few buildings erected after Fort Benton’s heyday and before homesteaders flocked to Montana in the twentieth century. Arched windows and front corner quoins add visual interest to this historic institution, which later accommodated the Chouteau County Bank and First Bank System. The ornate, one-story extension at the rear was added in 1918.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

This stream flow monitoring station is part of a nationwide system of approximately 7,000 streamflow stations operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS has principal responsibility for evaluation of the Nation's water resources by conducting investigations and research on the occurrence, quality, quantity, distribution, use, movement, and availability of surface and ground water. These monitoring stations are funded in partnership with other Federal agencies and State, local, and Tribal governments.

Stream flow had been monitored at this site since 1881. This stream flow monitoring station was the first to be established in Montana by the USGS. Current stream flow information for this and other states in the Nation are available on the internet at http://wy-mt.water.usgs.gov/

The instruments you see are operated by a float riding on the water surface in the well that reacts to the rise and fall of the Missouri River. The instruments record the water surface elevation (STAGE) measured in feet, which is then used to determine the discharge or volume of water (FLOW) passing this point in cubic feet per second (CFS).

Stream flow is routinely measured using a current velocity meter, depth-sounding weight, and bridge crane by USGS hydrographers from the highway bridge located 0.6 miles upstream. The measured stream flow and stage are plotted on graph paper to develop a rating curve. The curve is then used to generate a rating table which defines the FLOW at any given STAGE.

Stage data is transmitted every hour to a USGS computer database via satellite.

Captain Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition made the following comments in his journal describing the Missouri (South Fork) and Marias (North Fork) Rivers.

"we took the width of the two rivers, found the S. fork 372 yards and the N. fork 200. The north fork is deeper than the other but it's courant not so swift; it's waters run in the same boiling and roling manner which has uniformly characterized the Missouri throughout it's whole course so far; its waters are of a whitish brown colour very thick and tebid, also characteristic of the Missouri; while the South fork is perfectly transparent runs very rappid but with a smooth unriffled surface its bottom composed of round and flat stones like most rivers issuing from a mountainous country. -- Captain Meriwether Lewis, June 3. 1805

It is in this spirit of river exploration that the U.S. Geological Survey carries on its mission of scientific data collection of the Nation's rivers and streams.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

Across the street stood the first two stores of the T.C. Power Company, the third became the Pioneer Lodge. T.C. Power stepped off the Yorktown about this spot on June 14, 1867 with a tiny stock of merchandise bought "on jawbone," but with plans as flexible as the wild frontier. John became the "& Bro." in 1869. When the Blackfoot went north, Power posts followed to tap the lucrative robe trade. Their big freight outfits supplied white settlers across the region.

In 1875 Power bought the Benton as the flag ship of the upper Missouri's greatest steamboat line. The Block P between her stacks, and on a dozen other boats, became as well-known to Montanans as the insignias of the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez on the Mississippi. T.C. Power parlayed his start in Fort Benton into wealth, a seat in the U.S. Senate and a noteworthy place in regional history.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

In 1867, merchant T. C. Power, destined to become one of the state’s wealthiest and most influential men, brought his first wagonload of goods to Fort Benton, where he set up shop in a borrowed tent. Still in business in 1916, Power constructed a new grocery and department store to cater to “sodbusters” during the homestead boom. Architect George H. Carsley, who was Power’s neighbor in Helena, designed the stylish, two-story brick building. A flat roof, decorative brackets, and series of second-story windows are architecturally representative of the period.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

T. C. Power and Bro. was founded in 1868 at approximately this location. Initially housed in a wooden building, the store was moved in 1879 to a large brick structure across the street. When the firm expanded, a hardware store was built next door and the dry goods-saddlery building constructed in 1881. The business went bankrupt in 1934. In later years Palmer Hardware and Morrison’s Hardware occupied the building.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

Originally a pretentious two-story frame hotel familiar to all rivermen, the Choteau House was built in the spring of 1868. T.C. Power and I.G. Baker constructed the building between their businesses to rival Overland up the street.

At first operated by Mrs. Thwing, it was called the Thwing House until 1879 when Jere Sullivan arrived from Sun River and opened it as the Chouteau House. The structure also served as a military officer's quarter, with a convenient adobe annex for its saloon. When rival John Power rebuilt in brick in 1900, Sullivan followed with a two-story brick in 1903. The third floor was added in 1910 during the homestead boom. Jere Sullivan departed this world in 1919, leaving Fort Benton without its "ambassador of good-will and Irish charm," Clarence McCauley married his widow and ran the hotel until 1944.

Erected by Fort Benton Community Improvement Association.

In 1850 this building housed families of the engages in the two large second-story rooms accessed by two exterior stairways. It was communal living, but it was warmer and better living than a tepee. Downstairs were shops for the skilled craftsmen. A tailor, saddle and harness maker, tinsmith and a gunsmith were employed by the fur company but did other work in their spare time. When the military came, the building was converted to storage areas and a bakery. Today only the blockhouse and two remnants of the walls of this building remain from the original fort.

You stand now on the ancestral homeland of nomadic native tribes whose territories overlapped in the Missouri River area-all of them drawn by the rich diversity of life sustained by the river itself. Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Sioux and Assiniboine all considered this area home. So, too, did the Little Shell Chippewa, a tribe comprised of the Chippewa and the Métis, ("May-Tee", a French word for "mixed blood").

The story of the Little Shell begins with the Pembina Chippewa tribe which migrated westward from present-day Minnesota in the 1750s. The Pembina Chippewa settled in the Red River area overlapping Canada and North Dakota, where they adopted the customs of plains tribes. Many of the women married French and Scots-Irish fur trappers and traders, resulting in a new culture called the Métis.

In 1892, the Little Shell Chippewa and Métis were based on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Dakota Territory when Chief Little Shell refused to sell their land to homesteaders. The government retaliated by removing Little Shell and his followers fro the reservation membership list, leaving the group with no place to call home. They migrated westward to present-day Montana, hunting buffalo. Welcomed nowhere, they eventually scattered throughout central and northern Montana, and have worked ever since to reacquire formal recognition by the federal government.

Seal of the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe

The Little Shell tribal flag and seal features the buffalo facing west to symbolize the westward migration of the Pembina Chippewa. The Eagle Staff represents the traditional Chippewa culture and spiritualism. The "Assiniboia" flag reflects the mixed-blood heritage of the Little Shell Chippewa: the reds and white background indicates the mixing of Native and non-Native, the "fleur-de-lis" represents the French ancestry and the "shamrock"" represents the Irish and Scot ancestry.

Erected by Missouri Breaks Interpretive Center.

The Lewis and Clark Memorial was Fort Benton's contribution to the Nation's Bicentennial in 1976 and is the State of Montana's official memorial to the Expedition. Total cost was $175,000.

The statue is heroic-sized (1/6 larger than actual). It was cast by the lost-wax process at the Modern Art Foundry in New York City. The bronze weights 2 1/2 tons, is 21 feet high and was brought from New York upright on a semi-trailer! During the trip, problems were encountered with interstate underpasses. It caused many a head to turn, but the Captains were not recognized until the statue was west of the Mississippi.

The 85-ton granite base was a gift from Tanner Brothers Quarry near Square Butte, Montana. The rock was transported in mid-winter over frozen roads to save the roadway, on a thirty-wheeled trailer.

Artist Bob Scriver spent an entire year in research before beginning the three-year effort. Equipment, clothing, body features and faces are as historically accurate as could be determined, The Harpers Ferry rifles are accurate even to the name on the hammer plate. The actual telescope carried by Lewis was the pattern for the one he holds in the statue; the compass in Clark's hand was modeled from the one he really did use.

Indian lore was Mr. Scriver's forte, and the statue show his vast understanding of Plains Indian culture. Sacagawea's dress is that of a Shoshone who were her people. She is carrying a skinning knife and an awl; a strike-o-light hangs from her belt. Sacagawea is also wearing many rings and bracelets. Clark mentioned her fondness for jewelry which he often gave her on the trip.

On her back she carries Jean Baptiste in a blanket, folded to free both her hands. The pack board is missing since it was washed overboard a few days earlier. Secured to the baby's blanket is a serpent's pouch containing his umbilical cord; such a pouch was worn by all male children of the plains people. Pouches for females were shaped like a turtle.

Art critics have place the Memorial among the top ten major statuaries of Western art. Bob Scriver is among the West's greatest sculptors; he stated that this Memorial is the most outstanding work of his career.

Ceannaire mor Eireanach aoibhinn agus onorach

[A great, joyful and honorable Irish leader]

Thomas Francis Meager 1823 Ireland - 1867 Montana

Irish Patriot American Civil War Hero

Acting Governor, Montana Territory

A few yards from here Meagher met his mysterious Fate on July 1, 1867

"(We) shall not look upon his like again." -- Shakespeare

Erected 2009 by Montana and National Hibernians, Community of Fort Benton, People of the Republic of Ireland.

Back from the levee that was cluttered with their freight and warehouses stood the uptown merchant's establishments. Carroll and Steell founded the first mercantile in 1864. Murphy, Neil and Co., Kleinschmidt Bros. and W.S. Wetzel built here as well as the Overland Hotel and Wells Fargo Stage Office. I.G. Baker and T.C. Power set up businesses and built the Chouteau House down river near the fort. A keen rivalry began between the two business districts along Front Street. Saloons, dance halls and brothels soon filled the intervening blocks.

Location of the bridge was a compromise between the two districts. Both uptown and downtown merchants owned large-scale freighting outfits and literally sold everything. Some even owned steamboat lines. From 1864 to 1890 they competed heavily for the flourishing trade throughout Montana and Canada, and contributed the lion's share to the growth of the Northwest.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

In Memory of over 4000 U.S. Military working dogs that served in the Vietnam War when the war was over these dogs were left behind in Vietnam, Thailand,

Laos and Cambodia

(back)

In Memory of over 4000 U.S. Military working dogs that served in the Vietnam War. They served with all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces in South Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Combating the unconventional guerrilla warfare fought by the communist aggressors with over 500 dogs being listed as killed in action they were responsible for saving an estimated 10,000 American lives never hesitating to give their own. When the war was over, the dogs were left to their fate in Southeast Asia.

They were our heroes, our best friend and companions and we will never forget them.

After the days of the gold rush, the most important trade route from Fort Benton was the Whoop Up Trail. Begun during the whiskey trade, it developed into the major supply route to Alberta and much of Saskatchewan. Whiskey traders carried their wares north and returned with buffalo robes for transport down river by steamboat. From 1869-1883 most supplies came up river to Fort Benton by boat. Fort Benton merchants held most of the Canadian contracts, annuities and even the Mounted Police payroll.

The Whoop Up Trail ran up the Teton River by the Knees via Baking Power Flats, then to Shelby and across the border to Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. Eventually, the route included Calgary and Edmonton until the railroad reached Calgary in 1883.

Erected by Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce.

North from Fort Benton ran another wagon road to Canada, the famous Whoop-up Trail. Whiskey traders carried supplies north and brought buffalo robes south to Fort Benton for transport down river by steamboat. Later the Whoop-up Trail supplied the Northwest Mounted Police at Fort Macleod. From 1869 to 1883 most supplies came up river by boat, then by wagon to Canadian settlement as far north as Calgary and Edmonton. The trail ran up the Teton, by the Knees, via Baking Powder Flats to Shelby, then across the border and the Milk River to Fort Macleod and Lethbridge.